


Running Away to Join the Circus

by ShadowThief78



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - The Greatest Showman, Ariel Arts, Asahi is adorable, Basically it’s a circus and everyone performs, But whatever who cares?, F/M, Fluff, Kei is a clown and enjoys scaring small children, Kinda, Nishinoya is a trapeze artist, No Volleyball, Reader-Insert, Reader-Interactive, Romance, Sort Of, Sugawara is a ringmaster, Ukai and Takeda-Sensei are basically parents, Yamaguchi sells baloons, not really - Freeform, reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-10-21 20:15:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17649152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowThief78/pseuds/ShadowThief78
Summary: Hinata Shouyou can fly. So it’s no wonder he falls for a girl who was born in the air and has stars in her eyes..”Hinata!”One of his friends leans out his window, cupping his hands around his mouth. “What are you doing?!” He yells.Hinata smiles, feeling the cool night air tangle his hair as he balances on the pedals of his bike. “Running away to join the circus!”.He’s always loved the circus, always, from the first time he went. He just didn’t love it enough to run away before he saw her.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I own no part of Haikyuu!! This fic is mine, although most of the characters are not. Please don’t repost anywhere. Thank you for reading!

Hinata’s POV

Hinata first goes to the circus when he’s four.

His father takes him, promising fun and treats. He rides on broad shoulders, gnawing caramel popcorn, chubby hands pointing at the man on stilts, the fire-eaters, the jugglers on unicycles. His father laughs, bouncing the carrot-topped toddler on his shoulders. Colorful streamers and bright banners fly in his face. He only smiles wider and pushes them away, craving the next flashy new exhibit. Crowds mill around them, stirring the smoke- and sweat-scented air. Firecrackers pop, exploding and painting the sky with streaks of green, purple, white, red, gold, and blue.

They go back the next night, and the next. Hinata is addicted to it, the smell of hot oil and powdered sugar, the brilliant lights sparking to the blackened night sky, the puffs of sawdust the performers kick up as they entertain the audience. He loves the spectacle and illusion of it, the thrilling sight of the tightrope walkers and trapeze artists, the grace of the lady dancing on horseback. The circus is a wonderland of sounds, smells, sights, and much different from the boring life he has to trudge through everyday.

He tugs on his father's sleeve, asking to go back to the circus one more time, just one, please-

Only to be told it’s gone. It came only for three nights and it left, leaving an aftertaste of excitement and glitter and withdrawal from the thriving city. Hinata doesn’t believe it can be gone, not something that big and loud and bright until his father takes him to the field where it once was. Yesterday, it was a city of its own. Now, it’s only a field. Muddy, desolate, and strewn with the evidence of a circus - the deep gouges in the wet, heavy earth, the spilled food, the piles of horse manure. The grass is trampled to a soggy carpet more brown than green. The sky, once so alive with color, is a damp gray blanket muffling the whole earth. Even the trees are dying skeletons.

Hinata doesn’t realize how deeply in love with the circus he was until it left.

.

Years pass. Hinata waits, breathless in anticipation, for the circus to come again. He longs for the late summer nights, ripe with the excitement that he once experienced. He wants to breathe the electricity-filled air again, to taste caramel popcorn once more, to see the world in one evening out.

But it doesn’t come. He waits ten years, always alert for The Flyer (so loud, so colorful, so vibrant against the normal boring white paper) tacked to the town’s bulletin board, but it never comes.

His father leaves. His mother cries. It doesn’t come.

He starts first grade. It doesn’t come.

He learns to ride a bicycle, and gets a shiny blue one for his birthday. It doesn’t come.

He gets a paper route, the only paper route in town. It doesn’t come.

He turns ten, his first year with double digits. It doesn’t come.

Natsu is born. It doesn’t come.

He begins working afternoons in the General Store, getting paid a dollar a week (and some candy for him and Natsu, too). It doesn’t come.

Hinata has forgotten when he started linking the appearance of The Flyer to something important happening. He can’t remember as much of the circus now, but enough to know he loves it with all his heart and then some. He retreats into his head, into that memory, when Bad Things (Mom crying, roof leaking, bills piling up, not enough food, too much work, too cold, Mom looks so tired, so old, so sad, no, no, no) happen. The excitement. The surprise. The Circus.

He’s waited eleven years when, one afternoon (when wheeling his old and too-small and rusted bike that was once blue back home from his paper route) he sees a man. A tall one, really tall, with black hair in a little bun. Hinata’s town is not large. He knows everyone and everyone knows him (the troublemaker, the energetic orange-head, the one with no father). He knows this man isn’t from here. Hinata hardly dares to breathe when the man stands in front of the bulletain board, tacking something up, stepping back to see his work, then wandering off. He squeezes his eyes shut and prays, pleasepleasepleaselease, and opens them and it’s back. The Flyer is here and the circus is back!

If anyone saw him riding breathlessly back home with the empty paper bag over his shoulder, they would have smiled.

.

He is good the rest of the day, and the next day, waiting patiently until the last night of the circus, helping when asked and then some, taking care of Natsu and struggling through his homework as well as he possibly can, not shouting too loudly, eating all his vegetables, making his bed and not lazing around. He doesn’t say a word about the circus until after dinner-time.

His mother looks at him. “Is this why you’ve been so helpful all day?” She asks, smiling. Hinata twitches. He didn’t think she’d find out!

“Alright,” She says, getting her coat and her hat (the good one with flowers around the brim that she only wears when it’s a Special Occasion).

“Let’s go.”

.

The circus is back. Hinata’s eyes devour every detail. The blue of a dancer’s costume, the sizzling of funnel cake in hot oil, and the sweet sticky gloss of candy apples. The man he saw earlier is standing by a concession cart with peanuts and cotton candy, hunched over to look smaller. It doesn’t work, and he looks sad that people are giving him as wide a berth as possible.

A cheerful voice from behind them makes them turn. A boy - a boy! His age? - with freckles and messy dark hair is there, holding a bunch of balloons. He nervously offers one to Natsu (“For free, because you’re so cute,” he explains, looking a little embarrassed) and then bows. But before he can be swallowed by the crowd, Hinata shouts.

“Wait! How old are you?”

The boy turns around again. “Sixteen,” He says, then leaves.

Hinata doesn’t move until his mother shepards him and Natsu to the Big Top. He doesn’t realize he’s inside the tent (he thought he wouldn’t be because tickets are ten cents apiece).

Sixteen. He’s sixteen.

.

_Deer Muthor. Pleaze do not wory. I has run away to joyn the cirkus. I wil sent money to yu and Natsu. Love, Hinata._

.

He’s always loved the circus, always, from the first time he went. He just didn’t love it enough to run away before he saw her.

.

 

She’s tiny. That’s his first thought. After the larger-than life clowns, jugglers, horseback stunt-pullers, and animal tamers, she’s tiny and tame by comparison. Standing at the edge of the ring, where the pulverized wood meets the earth, she is small and delicate and fragile in comparison. She is a tiny star next to a supernova. She stands demurely at the shoreline, where sawdust meets cool ground.

She is wearing orange, he notices. The color of his hair, the fire that burns in their stove at home, the long-gobe sunset. Her leotard glitters with sequins and cheap sewn on gems. Her mask, that covers her forehead and cheekbones, has a plume of feathers mixed with sequins and bright swirling paint.

The ringmaster (the one with gray hair and warm brown eyes, not the older one with blonde hair) dubs her “the Aerialist from the Stars” and then the music (soft, graceful, beautiful like her) begins. She steps, runs, leaps lightly across the ground, catching hold of a waterfall of fire colored silk that pours from the shadows at the top of the tent. She wraps it around herself, and climbs, climbs, climbs up up up, legs straight and toes pointed, whirling around and around and making herself not a human, not anymore, but a goddess, a fairy, a magical creature from another realm. Hinata can't hear anything (not Natsu's gasps, not the muttering of the audience, not the ringmaster’s voice naming the tricks [footlock, candy cane, straddleup, double footlock, inverted splits, bow and arrow, half Monte, skin the cat, ankle hang, sailboat]), transfixed on the tiny figure so high, so small, yet capable of holding the attention of so many. The music stops, beats, pulses, and then a drum sounds and she wraps carefully one two three times upside down and pulls herself up and then she

drops,

drops,

drops,

down, spinning and burning and glittering under the bright spotlight, a brilliant falling star so unimaginably, inexplicably perfect and beautiful, something that doesn't belong in the imperfect world that Hinata is chained to.

And she stops, hovers, suspended over the earth like gravity is only a mere suggestion, like she is exempt from one of the fundamental forces that holds the universe together, and the crowd catches its breath and _roars_ , loud and approving, applauding and screaming and shouting for the girl who fell from the stars and lives among them, an angel in thinly veiled disguise.

And the ringmaster is yelling as loud as any of them, “A perfect, a _perfect_ double shooting stardrop, let's all give her a hand, ladies and gentlemen, please, for her, please-!”

And Hinata jumps and cries his wonder, Natsu is next to him and even his mother is smiling.

.

Later that night, Hinata is lying in bed with his head full of dreams. His messenger bag, (filled with a change of clothes, his toothbrush, some spare change he’s been hoarding for months, and a pencil and notebook) is hastily stuffed under his bed, and the note he scribbled after they got home. He slides out for under the sheets, grabs his bag, tiptoes downstairs, and slips on his coat and pageboy cap. He stuffs his feet into his well-worn boots and leaps off the porch, bolts down the path, vaults over the squeaky gate and swings on his bicycle, coasting down the lane.

.

“Hinata!”

One of his friends leans out his window, cupping his hands around his mouth. “What are you doing?!” He yells.

Hinata smiles, feeling the cool night air tangle his hair as he balances on the pedals of his bike. “Running away to join the circus!”

 


	2. Chapter 2

We are not a circus.

I don’t know a lot of things, but I do know that. We are not a circus.

We are a collection of scared children and adults, faking our way among many seasoned circuses, bumbling in the dark, making rookie mistakes and paying for them.

We are a conglomeration of leftovers, the bits and pieces of the world that nobody wanted.

My hands shake as I apply the finishing touches to my mask. Our first - very first - performance this evening is in three hours.

Another thing I know for sure: none of us are nearly ready for it.

There are only a few of us. At any given time, three to five of us will be in the ring, on display for the public to gawk at. One of us will be selling tickets. Two or three of us will be selling food. And one to three of us will be moving props, heaving sandbags and preparing for the next act. The other five will be behind the scenes, in the tiny tent we call a dressing room, getting ready to go on or changing so we can leave. The rest are outside, entertaining visitors. We are not allowed for guests to see us in costume but out of the ring (except the ringmasters). It ruins the magic.

That’s what Ukai says. I know it actually ruins the fragile illusion we are fighting desperately to keep alive, breaks the thin glass separating us from them, shreds the veil of concealment.

We are scared children, hardly old enough to be away from home, and yet we are here, running what we call a circus.

We are struggling to keep up with the load of responsibilities, duties, necessary chores that plague us.

We are terrified that an audience member will see through our facade, call our bluff, show the world what we are: frauds, thieves, cheats, and liars.

It’s hard.

Even when you’ve been doing this for years, it’s hard.

We have everything down to a science. On show days, all of us get up at 10 am, because we were up late the night before. If we’re moving, we get up at 4 to pack everything up. We make our beds (really just roll up the thin blankets and mattresses we sleep on), wash up, and start morning chores. For me, that means cooking (usually scrubbing potatoes or reheating stew - our diet is bland and as cheap as we can get). For others, it means feeding horses, counting supplies, polishing swords (Kageyama is a knife thrower. Asahi is the strongman and sword swallower), or cleaning or picking up trash. At 10:30, we eat. At 11, we start getting ready. Sometimes, Asahi and Tanaka (Tanaka is our fire-eater. He likes playing “dragon” and roasting chestnuts or popping popcorn for show. Apparently, it’s good publicity and good for business) will go to the town to pick up supplies - food, plus the miscellaneous things we always seem to run out of: safety pins and wax paper and needles and thread and matches.

Cleaning food carts, hanging any decorations, more picking up. Kiyoko and Yachi take care of their horses (Kiyoko, whose father bred horses for a living, was riding them practically before she could walk. Yachi had been a dancer in the Big City, so she and Kiyoko combined their knowledge into the dance-on-horseback thing they do now). Lunch is around noon, and since we open at 5 pm, we start: spreading new sawdust, arranging (cleaned earlier) costumes, stretching and warming up, practicing, rehearsing the fakery we all know.

Yamaguchi starts blowing up balloons, Tsukishima starts stilt-walking, and Narita and Ennoshita begin juggling and painting their faces with the pasty white makeup.

I grew up in a family steeped in circus. My mother was an aerialist, like me. And my dad was a tightrope walker. They died when the Big Top collapsed and they fell. I was four. I was lucky - I got out only with a sprained wrist.

So I was sent to live with Yuu. His family knew mine. He was a trapeze artist. So I came and stayed with them and practiced ariel arts and trapeze and tightrope walking (all on ropes and cloth and sticks tied to tree branches - not the safest) peacefully until I turned nine.

Then stuff happened and we went to the circus.

 

Takeda-Sensei is selling tickets. Ukai has given the show to Suga and Daichi, hving decided it’s their turn. Suga struts around and laughs and throws his top hat up as far as he can. Daichi is poring over the list of acts we advertised in the bulletin:  I’m last, as always. That means I’m working the giant kettle, buttering and salting popcorn until Iwaizumi and Oikawa come off from their comedy thingie and Kiyoko and Yachi come to take over. Then I’m behind the benches, until Lev and Kenma have finished firing Yaku out of a cannon. I rush to get changed while Bokoto, Aone, and Akaashi do their acro routine. Then Kageyama throws his knives and  Yuu flies on and off the trapeze and it’s my turn.

I rub rosin on my hands, trying to calm the flow of sweat. The lights are bright, the air is nothing short of stifling, and all I can hear is my heartbeat roaring in my ears. The audience is delirious with circus fever, having caught the bug.

I can see nothing but my silks. They are a safeguard, my sanctuary in the confusion. There are no safety nets but them, and I have never needed any. I know the fabric so thoroughly I can perform in my sleep. My hands close around the familiar, feeling the stretch, spring, and burn.

What most people don’t know or don’t care about is that ariel arts _hurts_. When you are suspended, held up only with a piece of cloth around your legs or foot, the silk pulls on your skin and hurt. My lungs scream for air as I lift myself up, up, up.

I feel good tonight.

I hang suspended from the roof, trusting the tent with my life, because this is my life. I know that the audience wants flashy, not a show of skill but the gaudiest tricks I know.

I give them what they want.

I whirl down, down, down. Keep your arms out, legs pointed, body tight, don’t curl in no matter how much you want to, smile, smile smile!

And it’s over. I’m done and the show is over.

 

.

 

Hinata waits. He doesn’t show himself to the circus, yet, just watches from a distance as the tiny city emptiers of foreigners, visitors, and just the bare bones of the circus is left. He left home last night.

Hinata parks his bicycle and wraps himself in a blanket, munching a handful of dried apples. He bought another ticket to the show today, and it was different! The flying girl was swinging on the trapeze with another boy with stripy, spiky hair. It was still so cool!

Hinata debates whether he should show himself  or not. It’s dark, and looked like it would rain later. He is still thinking when a light shines in his face.

“What are you doing out here like this?” A voice asks. “You’ll catch your death here. You’re lucky Takeda-Sensei recognised you from yesterday. He figured you’d be around here somewhere.”

Hinata blinks up at them. A pretty girl with long black hair and glasses looks back at him, holding an umbrella in one hand and and lantern in another. He didn’t even notice that it started raining.

“Come on,” She says. “Let’s get you dry.”

Hinata stands up, bundles his things, and wheels his bike toward the tent. The umbrella is leaky and drips on his head.

Inside is warm and bright. It smells like smoke, and there’s a fire in the middle of a ring of bare ground where the sawdust has been scraped away. Lanterns glow in a ring, sitting on the benches. There are more people here - sitting, standing, poking the flames.

“I found him,” The girl announces. Everyone turns to stare.

“You’re soaking wet!” One of them protests. “What happened?! Quick, we need a towel- Oh, thanks Yachi.”

Hinata is wrapped in warm blankets, plonked near the fire, and handed tea in a chipped mug and a bowlful of steaming soup. The rest of them eat, talking quietly, getting seconds and thirds and then chunks of cornbread.

“So, what are you doing here?” A bookish man with curly hair and glasses asks. The soft conversation and clinking of spoons on bowls abruptly stops.

Hinata doesn’t know why he’s so relaxed, but he talks. All of it spills out, the circus, the falling but not falling, him flying. When he’s done, there is only silence for a long while.

“You failed,” a girl with [H/C] hair announces. The fire glints dangerously in her eyes.

“I failed? Failed what?!” Hinata protests. “If you’d just let me talk to her, then-“

She throws the remains of her bread at his face. Hinata stops, astonished, and gapes at her. She’s mad.

“If you can’t recognise me without the costume,” She hisses. “You can’t join.”

Then she turns on her heel and stomps off, leaving Hinata with a smear of butter on his nose.

 

.

 

“Well,” Takeda-Sensei says, attempting to lighten the mood. “Should we all go to sleep now?”

Hinata sits quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Takeda says. “We’ll take you home tomorrow.”

“Why can’t I stay?” Hinata snuffles. “I promised my mom I’d send money back.”

“I’m sorry,” Takeda repeats, patting Hinata on the back. “But we really don’t have any money. The bank eats up everything. Get some rest, alright?”

Hinata follows the other’s lead, pushing two benches together and lying down on them.

Hinata is on the verge of falling asleep when someone shouts. He flails out of his blanket cocoon, panicking at the noise. “What? What is it?!”

“You’re floating!”

Hinata looks down and realizes he is, in fact, floating. “Oh,” he laughs nervously. “I guess I am.” The ground is a good twenty feet away, and getting smaller. “Um,” He begins. “I don’t think you could grab me before I float away,” He asks nervously. “I can’t exactly control this.”

He hears a curse, then a loud smacking noise, then a cry of pain. He has almost reached the canvas of the tent when a hand drags him down.

“Not. One. Word,” [Y/N] says, towing him back down.

She lands softly. Hinata grabs the rope offered by someone else and loops it around his waist.

“Well,” A man with blonde hair and a cigarette says. “Guess there’s no hidin’ it now. We got another flying one.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s finished! I’m not that good at writing romance, but thank you for reading.

Hinata watches in amazement as the black haired girl moves things with her mind, the other one grows flowers, and the boy with a buzz cut picks up a fist-sized ball of fire and eats it as easily as one might eat an apple. His throat glows orange and the light travels down, growing darker and redder until it is somewhere is his belly. He snorts smoke out.

Then Azumane lifts a bench with six people on it without breaking a sweat, Nishinoya bashes his head in and it crumples like a piece of paper before re-inflating, and Yamaguchi dunks his head in a bucket of water and holds his breath for ten minutes.

And now he knows that Aone dreams about things that really happened or really will happen, that Daichi can poke and slap people without touching them, that Suga can make people fall asleep or wake up by talking (he can control it most of the time, he says), that Tsukishima can tell someone’s greatest fear just by looking at them, and that [Y/N] can fly - like him!

.

 

Hinata slowly begins to fit into the circus’ rhythm. It involves irregular hours of sleep, hard work, and plenty of arguments and bickering, but he likes it. He’s learned a lot, too - how to make candy from the “feline four” (Lev, Yaku, Kuroo, and Kenma), to set up the tents, make popcorn, and swing on the trapeze from Nishinoya-senpai. He can’t do any tricks like jump off yet, though, because Ukai says he needs to control his flying before he can.

Suga is nice. He can do things like the three-card-monte trick and no one gets mad at him because he smiles at them. Asahi is nice too, but he can’t do the smile trick. So is Tanaka, but Daichi says he looks too thug-ish and should keep his shirt on so people will come back. And whenever he says that, Nishinoya-senpai will complain no, that’s not true, but then Daichi will smile and smack both of them from ten feet away and then he and [Y/N] will sigh, and shake their heads, and look at each other with the I-Thought-There-Was-Hope-But-It-Turns-Out-They’re-Much-More-Idiotic-Than-We-Thought look they have and then Daichi will drag Tanaka off and [Y/N] will make Nishinoya-senpai practice the trapeze and tightrope with her for a long time while Hinata stares from the audience seats.

They get the same They’re-So-Stupid look when Noya-senpai and Tanaka try to convince Shimizu to kiss them. Then Daichi and [Y/N] will make them shovel horse poop for the rest of the day.

Nishinoya and [Y/N] are close, says Takeda-sensei. They have known each other since they were little, even before the circus started. Hinata can see it, too - they sleep next to each other, partner up to do chores, trust each other with their lives. Every evening, when they’re in the air, they have to.

One day, when he’s practicing juggling (Ennoshita can make it looks so easy - how?!) one of the wooden balls goes flying and hits [Y/N]. Everyone goes quiet for a while before she picks it up and throws it back to him and says, “Be more careful next time,” and leaves.

Tanaka says she’s warming up to him.

Tsukishima likes walking around on his stilts and sneering at the short people. 

Kageyama says he’s a dumbass for nearly slicing one of his fingers off with one of the throwing knives. Lucky for Hinata, Takeda-sensei can fix him.

Hinata starts learning tightrope walking on a very low line. He wants to get good enough to walk the high wire, like [Y/N], with no pole and only a parasol, dancing on the air. He can float sort-of now.

Everyone likes it best when Yachi and Kiyoko cook dinner, because they know how to make all sorts of nice things like meat pies and custard instead of just oatmeal and soup and stew and boring old potatoes. Even Oikawa can’t mess up potatoes that bad (except for that time he forgot to wash them and put them, whole, in the pan and made them both burnt and raw somehow).

Nobody really likes the oatmeal. It’s all gray, because buying in bulk is cheapest and there isn’t much money because the upkeep of the equipment eats it up, according to Takeda-sensei. There are some funny lumps in it, and everybody tries to get as much cream and brown sugar in it as possible so to make it taste better. Even Yachi and Kiyoko can’t do much about the oatmeal. It’s like a currency here: bets are made over tomorrow’s sugar and cream. [Y/N] likes to eat her oatmeal real fast, first, then go and have the cream and sugar separate after her bowl is empty. But that sometimes means there’s no more left (unless Daichi or Kiyoko or Tsukishima are in charge and divide out the portions kinda evenly), so one time he woke up late, Hinata gave her his bit. She looked happy!

Asahi always pours too fast or too slow and the cream will spill a little or there will be too much for one person and not enough for another. Nishinoya and Tanaka don’t care, and then the first few always get more than their share. Kenma doesn’t really care as long as he gets some, so he takes his first and leaves it there, and everyone just takes what they want which is always too much and it runs out. After that, sometimes there isn’t enough for the next day and everyone will have to eat their oatmeal plain. 

But every once in a while, Takeda-sensei will slip everyone a bit of money because too much work isn’t good for them. Then before Ukai wakes up, they’ll sneak off to whatever town they’re staying at and maybe buy a bottle of ginger ale or a Hershey’s bar or climb up on the tall stools and have a hot fudge sundae. They always get scolded when they get back, but everyone can tell they’re not in any real trouble. They don’t go into any restaurants, but eat standing close together outside, because nobody ever knows what might be pretending to be a person. Everyone wants a meal, but either they don’t have enough or it’s too late or will take too long or it’s too dangerous. Sometimes more than one of those things happen, and they need to rush back before anyone can get anything. Hinata always sends some of the money back home, keeping it in a little pouch he has until there’s enough for a crisp bill that will fit in an envelope. He uses scrap paper to write notes or just writes on the back on the envelope.

Ukai says they’re looking for a loop with a bird lady (a ymbryne, says Suga) who’ll take them in, then they won’t have to move around to avoid the scary hollows and wights anymore. But he’s not sure where or when one is or even if they’ll be welcome there.

Hinata thinks it’s a little bit sad they don’t have a home, and mentions it once. It makes everyone look sad, so he doesn’t say anything like it again.

One of the times they have pocket money, Hinata is eating a doughnut he bought fresh from the bakery. The ground is cold and hard, but there's no snow anymore.

“Aww,” he hears someone say. “You're like me, aren't you? No family, no home. Poor thing.”

Hinata peeks behind the bakery. [Y/N] is there, crouched over a crate that says “Plums” in faded letters on the side.

“What's that?” He says.

[Y/N] jumps, looks at him and relaxes. “A kitten,” she says. “A small one.”

“Oh.” Hinata peeks over her shoulder. A tiny gray and white ball of fluff mewls in her hands. “It’s tiny! Can we keep it?”

“I don’t know,” says [Y/N]. “I hope so. It needs a good family.”

“Aren’t we a good famil-y?” Oh no, his voice cracked. Hinata swallows again, nervously. “I mean. . . There’s Ukai-san. And Takeda-sensei. And you and Daichi are really grown-up, and Kiyoko and Yachi are good at cooking, so we can feed it. And, um, Asahi would probably let it sleep on his pillow. And Kuroo and Kenma like cats. You have Kageyama, and Ennoshita, and Nishinoya-senpai, and Tanaka, and Lev, and Tsukishima, even though he’s scary sometimes. And Yamaguchi who might not like the kitten because it might pop his balloons. And. . .” He places a splayed hand over his chest. “You have. . . Me?”

[Y/N] blinks a moment, then smiles at the kitten. The knots in Hinata’s stomach untie themselves.

“How could I forget about you?” She teases. “Of course.” [Y/N] stands up and tangles her fingers in his. “Come on, Hinata. Let’s go home.”


End file.
